Author: Danielle Kurtzleben

NPR Enlarge this image Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Scott Olson/Getty Images Over President Trump’s first year in office, the U.S. underwent some changes that he would probably cheer. The economy continued strengthening (including, yes, the stock market, as the president likes to emphasize), and the number of people apprehended while trying to enter the country illegally fell sharply. However, some changes are less promising: The nation’s carbon dioxide emissions rose, and the amount of student debt grew by $47 billion. We have put together a wide variety...

NPR Enlarge this image Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) talks with reporters after leaving a tax reform news conference in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images A massive corporate tax cut is at the center of the Republican tax overhaul, in both the House and the Senate bills. But as lawmakers race to iron out the differences between the two bills, they will have to deal with a massive wrinkle that could greatly weaken many of the bill’s benefits for corporations: the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax....

NPR Enlarge this image Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., addresses a rally against the Republican tax plan outside the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 1. An analysis of the House and Senate proposals show they are likely to benefit the wealthy more than lower-income Americans. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images $1.4 trillion is a lot of money. It’s what all of the NFL teams together are worth, and then some. It’s more than twice the Defense Department’s 2016 budget. It’s enough to buy nearly 3.2 million homes at the median U.S. home price right now. It’s...

NPR Enlarge this image Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, places books of the current tax code on the dais, during a Nov. 6 House Ways and Means Committee markup of the Republicans’ tax overhaul plan. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc./Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc./Getty Images Were the GOP tax bill to pass as-is, it would give families a $300 credit per year for non-child dependents, as well as taxpayers and their spouses — for five years. And it would allow businesses to immediately deduct the costs of business investments from their taxable income, a practice called “full expensing”...

NPR Enlarge this image Amid his travels to hurricane-battered Florida, President Trump was repeatedly asked to explain what steps he hopes to take on the DACA program. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Win McNamee/Getty Images After learning that President Trump is working with Democratic congressional leaders on codifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, furious Trump supporters burned their Make America Great Again hats. Fox News’ Sean Hannity tweeted that “@POTUS needs to stay the course and keep his promises or it’s over.” And in response to a Trump tweet about allowing DREAMers to stay in...

NPR America’s young voters are more likely to be independent than their parents, and in 2016, many millennials flocked behind independent Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Americans love the concept of independence, whether it’s about annually celebrating freedom from the British or fetishizing individualism. In honor of America’s Independence Day, we figured it was as good a time as any to explore America’s political independents.1 What makes this a tricky task, though, is that independents aren’t really all that, well, independent in their beliefs. In fact, the overwhelming majority of independents lean toward one...

NPR President Donald Trump walks from Marine One to board Air Force One for a trip to Miami to deliver a speech on Cuba policy on Friday. Evan Vucci/AP President Trump issued an eyebrow-raising tweet Friday morning. “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt,” he wrote. Trump’s tweet comes less than a day after another strange statement from a senior official in his administration. On Thursday night, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement in which he cautioned Americans against believing stories about...

NPR On a recent Sunday afternoon, dozens of volunteers crammed into a small Jon Ossoff for Congress field office in Chamblee, Ga. They were there to canvass for the 30-year-old political newcomer, but they also got a treat: a speech from Ossoff himself. He only spoke for about four minutes, but he devoted almost a minute of it to women in particular. “It’s got nothing to do with me,” he said. “I keep saying it’s got everything to do with this community and what we can achieve when we work together and so much of it as you know...